BEVERLEY CRAVEN CONFIRMS THESE WILL BE HER FINAL LIVE SHOWS

JUDIE TZUKE REVEALS SHE WAS AN EARLY INSPIRATION TO DRUM & BASS LEGEND GOLDIE!

Fresh from their highly acclaimed, sold-out Woman To Woman tour (check out our review here) with fellow artistes Julia Fordham and Rumer, trailblazing British female singer-songwriters Beverley Craven & Judie Tzuke will again team up to play a new 14-date UK tour this autumn, with Beverley today confirming that these are to be her final farewell live shows.

Performing with the Gabriella Swallow String Quartet, this intimate new Strings Attached acoustic show (proudly presented by RLN Music) will feature songs and stories spanning their entire groundbreaking careers.

Brit Award winner Beverley Craven first shot to fame in 1991 with her eponymously-titled debut album featuring the hit singles “Holding On”, “Woman To Woman” and the eternal classic, “Promise Me“.

Talking of her decision to make this her final live tour, a reflective Beverley Craven said today; “It’s true – I’m not planning on doing any more shows after this tour. I’ve been writing, recording and performing now for over 40 years. This Strings Attached show is pretty special for both Jude and I, so it feels like the right time to hang up my headphones and ‘retire’ on a high note.

“No doubt over the next few weeks, before we start rehearsals, I’ll have my recurring nightmare about being on stage and forgetting how to play, or my other old anxiety dream when I forget to pack my stage clothes and have to drive home, and then miss the show.

“The most important thing for Jude and I is that we really want to enjoy ourselves with these fourteen shows. We’ve done the hard slog and the decades of sustaining our careers (albeit mostly under the radar). We planned this tour because we genuinely want to do it, not because we have anything to prove or promote. We have a great team and plan to find some nice restaurants to eat in beforehand (no more service station sandwiches) with a decent bottle or two of wine in the green room and come away from each gig knowing that we’re still at the top of our game and that a wonderfully poignant evening was had by all”.

Judie Tzuke first came to prominence in 1979, signing to Elton John’s Rocket Record Company and scored a worldwide Top 20 smash hit with her timeless classic “Stay With Me Till Dawn” and her critically acclaimed album ‘Welcome To The Cruise’. She will release a new 23rd studio album, ‘Jude The Unsinkable,’ in October 2023 (with copies on-sale at these autumn shows). The forthcoming album’s lead track ‘Keeper Of The Sun’ boasts a string arrangement written by Beverley and will be performed live during these Strings Attached shows – listen to “Keeper Of The Sun” here.

Talking about the new autumn UK tour, Judie says; “When I started my career in the Seventies I was, in my mind, more of a rock artist – I was friends with many rock bands and a lot of my audience was made up of leather jacketed rockers with Thin Lizzy, UFO, Black Sabbath and the like written on the outside of their jackets (but with my name secretly written on the inside – I don’t think they were sure if i was in that team or not?!). I’d never thought of having strings on my music until I started recording my first album and was introduced to the genius Paul Buckmaster – that changed everything for me. He wrote the beautiful string arrangements for “Stay With Me Till Dawn” and many other tracks on that debut album. We stayed friends and he has actually written on many of my more recent albums too. Since that very first meeting with Paul the idea of my doing shows complete with strings has been a dream that is now finally happening with this new tour.

“Funnily enough, drum & bass legend Goldie told me that hearing the strings on my debut album inspired him to make his award-winning album ‘Timeless,’ which just goes to show how strings can add so much to so many different genres of music.

“Bev’s idea of our performing together with a string quartet on this very intimate new tour was so exciting to me. I feel our music works so well together and Bev is such a wonderful artist – I’m lucky to get to listen to her lovely songs each night. We love chatting to the audience during our shows and she is so funny as well, with a wicked sense of humour. It really is a unique and wonderful experience, quite unlike anything I’ve done before.”

The full list of Beverley Craven & Judie Tzuke Strings Attached UK live shows is as follows;

27 October Worcester Cathedral
28 October Basingstoke Haymarket
3 November Leeds City Varieties
4 November Belper St Peter’s Church
5 November Salford – The Lowry
11 November Bury St Edmunds – The Apex
16 November Bristol St George’s
18 November London St Martin-in-the-Fields
23 November Haslemere Hall
24 November Canterbury Gulbenkian Arts Centre
25 November Milton Keynes – The Stables
30 November Liverpool – The Tung Auditorium
1 December Gateshead – The Sage
2 December Shrewsbury Abbey

Tickets for all dates are on-sale now via https://www.seetickets.com/tour/beverley-craven-judie-tzuke-strings-attached